We had the chance to speak with producer Gale Anne Hurd recently to talk about how they decide who lives and who dies on the series, if they felt the need to "explain" or justify Andrea in her final moments, why they stayed in the prison rather than move to Woodbury, and the zombies coming out full force in Season 4.

IGN TV: So the big topic of conversation following the finale was the choice to keep the Governor alive and kill Andrea. Can you talk about how those decisions were made? Did the fan response play into it at all? There was some criticism of her character.

Gale Anne Hurd: To be honest, if you pay attention, everyone’s gonna have a favorite and a least favorite. People are always gonna want villains to be killed, heroes to live. Personally, I’m a huge fan of Andrea’s from the comic book. I’m a huge Laurie Holden fan, so I’m partial to her. But at the same time, the decisions that are made on the show are really based on how -- death is never just a response to criticism or “Oh, we want to do something shocking.” That’s never the case. It really is based on how a death will affect the future storytelling. In other words, when Lori died, we got to see how that affected Rick and Carl. Their responses have really fueled the season. And with the death of Andrea, seeing Michonne for the first time show her true emotion and to see that her character has come full circle -- that was her family, and she has to say goodbye to her family, but I think we’re going to see how her death affects not only Michonne, but everyone in the prison community. I think also, what it helped do was inspire Rick to welcome in the Woodbury survivors.

IGN: Because he felt like that would have been something she would have wanted?

IGN:Alternatively, keeping the Governor alive, was that about the strength of the performance? Or is it that he provides a strong counter to Rick and what he brings out in him as a character?

Hurd: The Walking Dead will never do what’s expected of us. You always expect that the big bad will be killed in the finale. It’s really unlikely we’re going to do that. I think that there’s more to be done with not only the character, but with the conflict that we get to see, the difference in leadership between the Governor and Rick.

IGN: It sort of illuminates where somebody could go in that kind of a world.

Hurd: Exactly.

IGN: in those final moments with Andrea, did it feel like in the writing of it, that the desire was to redeem the character, have her explain where she was coming from with Milton?

Hurd: I think part of the what the show is, is that it’s a character-driven show. It’s a show in which there are often monologues, whether it’s the Morgan scene with Rick in 12, some of the scenes going back to the second season between Daryl and Carol talking about Cherokee Rose -- you know, people do open up, and they talk about their journey. They talk about what’s affected them. So I don’t think that is in any way different from what we’ve seen on the show before. Truly, if you know you’re dying and that there’s no way out, no hope, I think that traditionally people do get off their chest what’s concerned them and how they’d like to be remembered.

IGN: In that moment, it did seem like maybe there was hope. It felt like maybe she could have gotten out of it and killed him in time.

Hurd: Yeah, but she knew that at some point he was no longer going to be sentient. Either he died and the period of time that it takes to come back as walker varies from a few minutes to even more than a day -- so she had no idea how long that process was going to take.

Continue for more on the Governor, if Carl was right and what's to come on The Walking Dead...